


Canon Balls

by teasel (lydiabennet)



Category: Lord of the Rings (Movies), Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Anachronistic, Geese, Humor, M/M, Pumpkins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-22
Updated: 2009-09-22
Packaged: 2017-10-28 12:23:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/307846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lydiabennet/pseuds/teasel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frodo and Merry are intriguingly occupied in a field of pumpkins when they are -- to their horror --interrupted by Lobelia.  She objects to many things, but most of all to the fact that the entire story is non-canonical, and couldn't possibly take place in Tolkien.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Canon Balls

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ.

"Here?" Frodo said, his eyes darting around the open field. "Are you serious?" He made a stifled noise; one of those hard-to-identify noises that people do make when someone else's tongue is in their mouth, and when other significant developments are occurring elsewhere.

Merry drew back a bit and looked around. The sun was shining. The sky was blue. The lane to Bywater was twenty feet away.

"Merry, love," Frodo said, plainly making an effort to look stern, "if anyone should happen along -- "

"Only think," said Merry. "They would see us." They stared at each other, panting. Merry looked at Frodo's breeches. Frodo looked at Merry's. The verdict was clear: this was a good idea. Possibly it was the best idea Merry had come up with since that thing with the whipped cream and the handcuffs last night. Frodo made the noise again, and if that wasn't a giggle, then Merry was the Queen of the Tuckborough Fair.

Merry lunged forward to remove Frodo's clothing as quickly as possible.

"You _are_ serious!" Frodo exclaimed, batting at Merry's hands with an ineffectual sort of resistance that said _please continue_ as clearly as if he had sent Merry an engraved invitation, accompanied by a map of his erogenous zones and detailed bullet-point listing of his personal kinks. "You want to have sex in a field!"

"No," said Merry, "I am removing your shirt to examine it for possible flaws." He shoved the shirt halfway off Frodo's shoulder, and the sound of tearing fabric echoed on the morning air. _Oh dear_ , he thought. Again. At this rate Frodo would have no shirts left at all, and Merry would have to trundle him back to Brandy Hall and support him as a kept boy. No more of this solitary tromping though the Shire or wandering under the stars in search of Elves. Frodo would spend the remainder of his days shirtless, the sole occupant of Merry's personal seraglio: lolling about in the steamy bathroom, perhaps lightly oiled . . . hmm. Merry ripped the shirt off completely and tossed it away; it fluttered through the air and draped itself gracefully over a nearby pumpkin.

Frodo might have said something, but he was taking the opportunity to pant some more. He stared at Merry wide-eyed: hair disheveled, face flushed, and generally looking as if he had just run up the Hill. Well, no, that wasn't quite an accurate description: actually, Frodo looked very, very much like he wanted to commit some assault upon Merry's person, but was being restrained by some last remaining shred of decency. "You _are_ serious," he repeated at last, and Merry rolled his eyes. Surely they'd just been through this.

"Serious?" he said, licking Frodo's collarbone thoughtfully. "Never, Frodo. Surely you've figured that out by now? We don't need to be serious. We're bonking, or so I hope; not attending the Mayor's Overlithe speech. Levity is permitted. Joking, even. Raucousness, likewise. You may, if you wish, indulge in a recitation of comic verse, or --"

Frodo interrupted him with a kiss. Not just any kiss; a deep, wet, messy one; a kiss that plunged into Merry with the obvious intent of finding the innermost depths of his soul and marking them _Property of Frodo Baggins, Esq_.

Oh. Oh my. This particular kiss was, Merry admitted to himself as it progressed, one of Frodo's better efforts; if he had to rate it on a scale of one to ten, he would . . . . _Tongue_ , another, more basic part of Merry's mind interrupted. _Right-ho_ , he thought. His higher brain functions hastily erected a sign that said "Getting laid, back in ten minutes," and then --

 _tonguelickheatwetthrustheatthrustgoodhardheatgood_ . . .

"I beg your pardon!"

Merry moaned, confused. Something new was going on, and his brain was off-line. Possibly this was bad. _Reboot_ , he told his brain dreamily. _Don't wanna_ , it said.

"I BEG your pardon!"

There it was again, that new thing. _Has Sam joined us?_ Merry wondered, and a key part of his body became even more painfully hard than it had been before -- but no, that wasn't Sam, it couldn't be, because Sam's voice was deep and rich and sounded like someone had just coated his warm wet throat with honey, but this voice --

"I BEG your PARDON!"

\-- sounded more like a screech owl being subjected to a tax audit.

Merry slammed back into full awareness. He was staring at the ground, and when he gasped, the scent of freshly turned earth and crushed leaves filled his breath. He must be lying on his stomach. . . no, that wasn't it, he was bent over, somehow. He squiggled about for a better look and saw something big and orange beneath him.

Oh, dear.

He was naked as the day he was born, bent over a very large pumpkin in an open field with Frodo Baggins on top of him, and right there, _right_ there, not twenty feet away, standing in the Bywater Lane . . .

Merry squeezed his eyes shut and moaned with fear.

"Well, Frodo Baggins!" said the screech owl-like voice. What do you have to say for yourself?"

"Erm," said Frodo from somewhere over Merry's head. "Good morning?"

Merry opened his eyes, saw Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, and shut them again. Whose idea had this been? Oh. His. Right.

He reopened his eyes. Lobelia had three friends with her, every one of them decked out in full female regalia of petticoats and flounces and umbrellas and disapproval. He shut his eyes again.

"Frodo Baggins!" Lobelia shrieked, in a tone that would easily freeze molten lava, grind it into fragments, and serve it as one of those sweet, fruity cocktails that can knock a full-grown cave troll unconscious in ten seconds flat. "I would very much like to know WHAT you are doing in this field!"

"Erm," said Frodo. "I fancy the technical term would be 'sodomy,' but I should very much prefer to call it . . ."

"That," she said, "is not what I meant."

"Certainly not," another one of the ladies said with a disdainful sniff.

"We know what sex is," said another. "I for one have five children, so there's no need to take that supercilious tone with ME, young hobbit."

"Why, we were having anal sex before you were a twinkle in your mother's eye," said the third.

'Three or four times a day, during the Long, Boring Winter of '64," Lobelia concluded. "Don't give yourself airs. You didn't invent it."

"Oh," said Frodo weakly. "Thank you for letting me know all that." He then stopped speaking. There didn't seem to be much else to say, and even Merry, who was usually much more socially resourceful than Frodo, did not feel he had anything useful to add to the conversation. He shifted uncomfortably. Some part of the pumpkin essential to its growth dug painfully into his ribs.

An awkward silence fell.

"Well, then," Frodo said at last, "shall Merry and I just carry on, then? I wouldn't want to keep you ladies from . . . whatever it was that you had planned for the morning."

"We are doing exactly what we had planned," said Lobelia.

"Intruding on my private life?" Frodo said.

"No," said Lobelia cryptically. "And you can hardly call your life private when it is taking place in the middle of a field. Which brings me back to my original question, WHAT are you doing in this field?"

"I just said --"

"I am referring," Lobelia said, "not to the fact that you are having sex -- which is only to be expected at your age -- but to this revolting, inexplicable, and senseless OBJECT." And she pointed toward them with an umbrella that quivered with the force of her wrath.

"What, me?" Merry squeaked, feeling it was about time he spoke up for himself. He assumed the most dignified expression he could manage while sandwiched between Frodo and a pumpkin.

"No, not you!" Lobelia snorted.

"Brandybucks," said another of the ladies. "As useless as a Dwarf in a flower-arranging class." And the other ladies nodded agreement.

"I refer," said Lobelia, to that -- object -- beneath the Brandybuck whelp."

"What?" said Merry. "This pum -- "

At this all four of the ladies shrieked in horror and covered their ears. A covey of partridges startled at the sound and flew off, annoyed. "Don't say it!" Lobelia screamed. "Don't say it out loud! You would introduce it into the dialogue, and that would be worse than having it in the story in the first place!"

"Much worse," said another of the ladies.

"Incomparably so," said another. "We would have to stop reading."

"That would make it badfic for sure," said the third.

"Ladies," said Frodo, with an exasperated sigh, "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"That -- that _veg_ -e-ta-ble," said Lobelia, rolling each syllable off her tongue as if it might poison her, "is not canonical."

"Not canonical," Frodo repeated, tripping over the unfamiliar word.

"Not even slightly," Lobelia said firmly, her lips pressed together into a thin, unforgiving line. "There are no -- there are _none_ of those _veg_ etables -- in the Shire."

Merry looked down. The pumpkin was still there. "What about this one, then?" he asked. He knocked at it with his knuckles to illustrate his point, and the pumpkin made the reassuring _thunk_ sound of something that has passed its reality check with flying colors.

"It cannot possibly be here," Lobelia said primly.

"Of course it can," Frodo said, "and I'm damned glad of it too, since it helped me get a much better angle. I've never heard Merry make a noise like the one he was just making. Before you ladies stopped by."

"Be that as it may," Lobelia said, ignoring Frodo's hint, "this -- thing should not exist, and therefore it does not. I insist that you cease bonking on top of a non-existent object."

"It's distracting," one of the other ladies complained.

"Very," said another, tossing her curls. "Throws me right out of the story."

"Me too," said the third. "It introduces a level of ontological instability into the fictive universe."

"That it does," said Lobelia. "And I'm sad to say that this -- vegetable -- is not the only error in this story. Far from it."

"Certainly not!" said another lady. "Scroll up, Lobelia, dear. I'm sure I caught five or six canonical errors early on, before we even got to the sex."

There was a slight whizzing sound. The world spun and blurred and disappeared, and then --

 _Merry lunged forward to remove Frodo's clothing as quickly as possible._

 __

 _"You are serious!" Frodo exclaimed, batting at Merry's hands with an ineffectual sort of resistance that said please continue as clearly as if he had sent Merry an engraved invitation, accompanied by a map of his erogenous zones and detailed bullet-point listing of his personal kinks. "You want to have sex in a field!"_

 __

"Right," said Lobelia, and the world spun again, and Merry was back over the pumpkin with Frodo on top of him. "HOY!" Frodo and Merry shouted in unison.

"Do be quiet," said Lobelia, fixing them with a beady glare. "Erogenous zones? Bullet-point listing? There are no such things in the Shire! The very idea of a bullet-point listing, right here in Hobbiton among decent folk! Frodo Baggins, I'm ashamed of you!

"It's hardly his fault, Lobelia," another lady pointed out. "The story is from Merry's point of view, and _he_ was thinking those things."

"Frodo's no better," another lady said grimly. "If you just scroll up again -- "

"No!" Frodo shouted in alarm. "Ladies, if you don't mind, I'd much rather stay right here on top of this pump--"

"DON'T SAY IT!" all four ladies screamed at once.

"-- kin," Frodo finished.

The heavens darkened, and a cold wind blew from the East. The ladies gasped in horror.

"Oh, well done, Frodo, well _done_ ," said Lobelia, stomping her foot and gesticulating wildly with her umbrella. "You had to say it, didn't you? Couldn't leave well enough alone! It's in the dialogue now, you furry-footed fool! It can't _possibly_ be explained away as the intervention of an unreliable narrator. There's no way this fic can be saved! Now it will be completely overwhelmed by non-canonical details!"

A flock of Canada geese flew across the sky, honking mournfully. Frodo looked up. "Pretty," he remarked. "Atmospheric. I like them."

"Me, too," Merry agreed.

"I've had it," one of the ladies declared. "This fic is nothing but mindless smut. I'm going to TORC." With a loud "POP" she disappeared.

"Splendid idea," said another. "We don't need to scroll; I remember quite well that the fic mentioned seraglios. I'm sure we have no such things here in Middle-earth. "

"I distinctly remember fruity cocktails," said another. "We don't have those, either."

"We most certainly do not," Lobelia said. "And I recall several mentions of higher brain functions. I'm quite sure we have none of _those_."

"No, ladies," Frodo concurred politely. "You do not."

Another awkward silence fell.

Lobelia drew herself up to her full height, as if she was in the throes of thinking out a really crushing parting remark; but all she found to say was --

"You'll live to regret it, young fellow! You don't belong here; you're no Baggins -- you -- you're a Brandybuck!"

And the three of them vanished, leaving behind only a faint smell of sulphur. The Bywater lane was empty, and Merry and Frodo were alone under a laughing blue sky, in a field of ripe pumpkins extending as far as the eye could see.

"Goodness!" Frodo said at length. "People come and go so quickly here!"

Merry craned his neck to look back at him. "Enough with the meta-references to other movies," he said. "Are you going to shag me or not? Don't worry," he added, when Frodo's slight frown failed to resolve itself. "I don't suppose they'll be back."

"The horror," Frodo murmured. "The horror."

"Frodo, now you're showing off."

"The world has changed," Frodo intoned.

"Frodo . . ."

"I feel it in the water . . . "

" _Frodo . . ._ "

"I feel it in the pumpkins . . ."

 _That's it_ , Merry thought, and his higher and lower brain functions agreed on something for once. He whirled about with the speed and agility of a highly caffeinated whippet, and after a few adjustments and some grunting, Frodo lay beneath him, most fetchingly bent over the pumpkin.

"Why," Frodo purred, as Merry resumed their activities where they had left off, only reversed, "do I always -- _oh_ \-- end up -- _more_ \-- on the bottom?"

"Oh come now, Frodo," said Merry, ignoring the frantic _in a moment_ from beneath him. "Surely you know that it's canon."


End file.
